Progress/Report

Hi all. Here we are right between the Spring Equinox and Easter. Time to celebrate growth and change and all that good stuff.

Firstly, here's my poem for Spring (hey, I think it should be capitalized):

III: I
Come, Spring, reckless lover of the earth, make the forest's heart pant for utterance!
Come in gusts of disquiet where the flowers break open and jostle the new leaves!
Burst, like a rebellion of light, through the night's vigil, through the lake's dark dumbness, through the dungeon under the dust, proclaiming freedom to the shackled seeds!
Like the laughter of lightning, like the shout of a storm, break into the midst of the noisy town; free stifled word and unconscious effort, reinforce our flagging fight, conquer death!

-Rabindranath Tagore, from The Fugitive and Other Poems

I know it's the same one I used a couple of years ago, but I really like it, and re-reading it today I'm finding things in it I didn't see before. Actually, I'm leafing through these poems and really enjoying them today. Sometimes they seem too weird and Whitmanish (I like Whitman too, don't get me wrong) but with the rain outside and a cup of tea, they're just about right. Like this one, which is not seasonal, but I'm just really digging it:

III: VII
How often, great Earth, have I felt my being yearn to flow over you, sharing in the happiness of each green blade that raises its signal banner in answer to the beckoning of the blue sky!
I feel as if I had belonged to you ages before I was born. That is why, in the days when the autumn light shimmers on the mellowing ears of rice, I seem to remember a past when my mind was everywhere, and even to hear voices as of playfellows echoing from the remote and deeply veiled past.
When, in the evening, the cattle return to their folds, raising dust from the meadow paths, as the moon rises higher than the smoke ascending from the village huts, I feel sad as for some great separation that happened in the first morning of existence.

-Tagore again (duh).

I mean, clearly this is some sort of maybe Transcendentalist/Weltgeist/I don't-even-know thingy, which I have never felt particularly able to relate to, [although I can often appreciate it aesthetically (e.g. Thanatopsis, etc)]. And yet, somehow I know exactly what he means. wtf? I mean, don't you have days or moments when you just want to raise your signal banner in answer to the beckoning of the blue sky, and you know all the grasses and flowers and trees are doing it and it's the right thing to do? Maybe Suryanamaskar or some other yoga thing is a way to do that. hmm...

But I still don't believe any of that requires any sort of belief in the supernatural.
- posted by k @ 10:11 AM